Today in Los Angeles Politics: Jennerjahn Backs Down on Website Hijack

Candidate for Congress
James Andion

We reported Friday that former Mayor Sam blogger, goofy recall leader and Congressional candidate Phil Jennerjahn was perhaps in a heap of trouble for hijacking the website URL of his primary opponent, candidate James Andion. A firestorm of controversy may have pressured Jennerjahn to reverse his course of action.

Jennerjahn had learned of the website address Andion planned to use for his campaign, prior to Andion purchasing the domain and purchased the domain himself, posting his own campaign material there. Jennerjahn said in a statement he was "quite proud" of himself for this strategic "move."

Thursday evening Jennerjahn was contacted by Andion's campaign manager Joe O'Connell to discuss the matter. Rather than returning O'Connell's call Jennerjahn fired off a combative blog post essentially telling Team Andion to take a leap.

The matter set off a firestorm in local Republican political circles with many of the view that if Jennerjahn's move was not illegal or unethical it was at least bad form. Tea Party Activist and State Senate candidate John Stammreich described the move on Jennerjahn's Facebook page as a "childish, high-school prank" further admonishing Jennerjahn "It's a violation of Reagan's 11th Amendment, and he would be pissed if he were alive!" Stammreich further stated he may consider increasing donations to Andion as a result of Jennerjahn's move.

The controversy and bad press may have been too much for Jennerjahn as he since removed his original response to O'Connell from his blog and replaced it with a brief but more conciliatory note in which he offers to discuss returning the URL to Andion.

It may however be too late for Jennerjahn to recover from the matter as the move created the view amongst Republicans that Jennerjahn is an opportunist and generated additional sympathy, awareness and contributions for Andion, a local attorney.